Friday, October 17, 2008

So a couple of my girlfriends work for Elie Tahari, who designed this cute BCA tee for Bloomingdale's. I am planning to be a part of their in-store event this Monday at the Bloomingdale's in the Aventura Mall. I'll be speaking or something along those lines, perhaps reading an excerpt of my recent story. In any event, those of you readers in the area who would like to stop by and say hi, I would love to meet you. I think it's around 1 p.m. I will post the details as soon as I get them.

I have more diet, beauty and wellnes tips from Acupuncturist. My eyes have been really puffy of late, most likely another lovely side-effect of the jet fuel. Naturally I've got every 'miracle' eye cream under the Neiman's ceiling, but nothing has been reducing the swelling. But you know, tea bags usually do the trick. Except the ones I'd been using.

"So, this may seem like a really crazy question, then again, coming from me it's not so crazy," I said to him Weds. "What kind of teabags should I use to reduce puffiness?"

Bet you'd guess green, huh? Since that's all the rage and everything. Actually, it's 100% black tea that works makeup miracles. Black tea has uh, "blah blah, the most antioxidents of all teas, blah, blah nutrients," (all I could hear was that it worked) and is a natural astringent and toner, he said. All I know is when Chad talks, I listen. First of all he's a brilliant acupuncturist, a nutritionist, has a doctorate in Eastern medicine and is a wealth of knowledge in general about food and health.

Thus, I knew I was going to ask him about those seven fucking pounds. Actually, he said, he just got some samples of metabolic supplements that are made up of all-natural Chinese herbs. He said his patients have been responding really well and sloughing off water weight in mere days. Bring it on. He knows the dude who makes it, and I don't think it's on the market quite yet.

As it turns out, Chad is also an Herbalogist (sp?). One of only 200 in the country licensed to prescribe Chinese herbs medicinally.

He hasn't really explored supplements/herbs with me yet, since we need to get my baseline health back up first I think.

Well, you can imagine one of my next questions:

"Do the Chinese ever use marijuana herbs?"

Ahhh, yes they do in fact. And here's the great part for all you smokers out there: You can brew some fairly potent pot tea using stems. How awesome is that? Apparently it's a really mellow, physical high a la pot brownies that the Chinese used during meditation to help them reach the highest state of consciousness. Cool, no?

So not only did I get a massage and acupuncture this week, but diet, beauty and tea recipes as well.

Gah. I SO want to get out of this country, go on sabbatical somewhere where there's nothing to do but write and be in nature. Why don't I? Well, bimonthly Herceptin shots put a kink in that plan. I can't imagine being in India or Africa having to go to a hospital. No way.